Blogging on a long-term contract for an undisclosed fee

Primary Menu

Friday roundup: Greece / Book launch / 125

So Friday rolls round again in a flash, apparently seven days after it last did. That doesn’t feel quite possible.

Olympiacos on Tuesday started badly and never really picked up, but if you haven’t yet filed that one away under ‘nothing to dwell too much on’ then I shall politely recommend that you do. The final – and even penultimate – Champions League group games have the habit of throwing up matches that mean the world to one side but not a whole lot to the other, and this was one of those. The outcome will not affect the pecking order of many of the players: Fabianski, Squillaci, Chamakh & Arshavin are benchwarmers and showed why, while Coquelin, The Ox and Frimpong did themselves no harm.

On Wednesday it was of course the Arseblog book launch, with the evening in the Tollington being a memorable and lively number. Arseblogger was ensconced in the corner getting wrist-ache (you at the back, stop tittering – he was signing his book), and the pub bubbled and fizzed with gooners aplenty. One of the most enjoyable things for me was putting real faces to virtual ones, with many of us introducing ourselves with the name of our blog or twitter handle first, and our actual names second. It really did put the social into social media and confirmed what a top collection of folk inhabits this sometimes peculiar online world we live in. Hats off to the driving force behind the whole thing too: the book is a tremendous achievement. Also impressive (and I have yet to ask him how he did this) was the fiddling of the night’s Champions League action, rapturously received via the pub’s many screens as you might imagine.

Finally, today starts a weekend of memories for the club with the unveiling of three statues at the stadium ahead of our 125th anniversary match against Everton. There’ll be legends and nods to tradition and panoramic photos and the Royal Artillery band and I’d be massively looking forward to it if only for the fact that I can’t make it. I was desperate to gurn into the panoramic photo for posterity, but there you go, it’s my son’s birthday party (he was founded more recently, though not in a pub in Woolwich) and that’s just the way it is.

Finally, back to Arseblog, and I’m on the arsecast today discussing a bunch of stuff. Always fun to do, so tune in.

So yes, it’s Friday. Wonderfully, marvellously Friday. Have a great weekend.

We could and should have played better on Tuesday but I do honestly think it’s not as easy as it sounds – mentally – when you know it’s neither here nor there. All the while, the opposition are massively psyched up.